As some of you may have noticed from my movie listing, I went to see Shrek 2 on Friday. It was subpar at best.
To be fair, it was a sequel to a fairly successful movie and it would be unfair to expect a parallel performance to the original. Of course, this is why I usually avoid sequels, because sequels tend to suck. But I got suckered in by good reviews and my friends (I'm not going to blame Wheeler as he was as much dragged as I was) and went and bore witness to another testament to the failure of sequels.
Detractors will say that the plot was cute. I will counter that there was no plot and that the entire movie consisted of pointless action with a thinly-veiled purpose of providing a springboard for a series of gags, most of which seemed forced and like the writers were trying much too hard to be amusing. The endless gay jokes were annoying, the transvestite step-sister wasn't funny, and persistant cultural references were banal and pointless. Let's face it, there were a lot of funny lines and interesting gags, but they were outweighed by a brazen overall sense that the spirit of George Lucas was in our midst somewhere with his quintessential corporate whoredom.
So yeah... the ending might have been considered cute if it weren't so obnoxiously cliched. Combined with the obnoxious music video tribute to American pop culture, and I was left wanting something more... something better.
Posted by Vengeful Cynic at May 23, 2004 07:32 PM | TrackBack